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Guy frequently keeps this blog updated with thoughts, challenges, interviews and more!

Tag: teaching

American Adventures: Seattle and VISS

My sojourn in Italy ended when I left Lucca for the United States, on the very day of the Lufthansa pilot strike. After much kerfuffle and a comedy of errors (including the airport train in Newark that takes you from one terminal to another being out of action at 5am occasioning a walk outside to find a taxi to take me to the right terminal) I got across the world to Seattle. This is one of my favourite American cities, as regular readers of this blog will know, not least because it is home to some of my favourite people. I arrived at about 11.30 am, and was teaching the freeplay class for Lonin that evening; I was swaying on my feet a bit, so didn’t kit up and join in, but instead taught them how to use freeplay as a diagnostic tool. In fact, the imperfections we discovered that evening created the class plans for the rest of the weekend.

This was an unusual weekend seminar, in that instead of the normal two full days, we had a small group (about 10-12 folk) on Saturday morning, the full group (27 students) for a longer session that afternoon, then two more small group sessions on Sunday. This let us cover much more ground, and each small group effectively chose what they wanted to learn in each session. I’d highly recommend this format for similar events in the future.

27 against one: seems fair to me.
27 against one: seems fair to me.

It was deeply satisfying to see how the Lonin group has grown and developed since my last trip. I attribute this to the efforts of the individual students, of course, but that would not be enough on its own: I think they owe a great deal of their development to the determined, passionate and skilled leadership of Eric Artzt.

We had a full group dinner at a fabulous barbecue restaurant on the Saturday, and a smaller dinner party at Neal’s house on the Sunday. Neal’s lovely wife Ellen almost made me cry with a toast she gave; I don’t know that I’ve ever felt more welcome anywhere.

I also managed to catch up with my friend Mark Teppo, chief editor on the Mongoliad, and founder of his own, new, small press: Resurrection House. I had figured that with changes in flight schedules, and not having any swords or freeplay kit with me in Italy anyway, I might as well travel hand-luggage only: then Mark gave me the entire back catalogue of his press; 8 glorious books. Through my advanced packing skills (compared to which my swordsmanship is decidedly amateurish) I fit them all in. Chimpanzee just made it to the top of my reading list; I’m 4 chapters in and totally hooked. It’s brilliant. Buy it and read it! One interesting coincidence; Mark’s father is the man who developed the laser cleaning technology that has spruced up the cathedrals, leaning towers, and glorious artwork that we have been bathing in in Italy. I’d like to shake his hand. Because these artefacts deserve to be seen at their best, and this technology has massively reduced the costs of reviving them.

I also managed to catch up with the legendary Gus Trim, and see his workshop of doom. Seriously, this chap has the tools to outfit an entire zombie apocalypse.

Gus is a legend, and as such never appears on film. But that is his arm and beard.
Gus is a legend, and as such never appears on film. But that is his arm and beard.

Then on to Vancouver, and VISS. This was an utterly delightful event, except for the unfortunate tendency of shrines to yours truly popping up in all sorts of odd places. I AM NOT DEAD YET! As the students in my three-class seminar series found out.

I'm NOT DEAD!
I'm NOT DEAD!

They were a lovely group to teach, as they quickly picked up on the idea that I was there to teach them what they wanted to learn, rather than just run a class plan through them. Each class began with us deciding together what to cover, and at each point where a decision had to be made about where to go next, I consulted them. This lead to some interesting choices; I was not expecting to spend over an hour on longsword striking mechanics, but damn, that’s the best stuff!

The event was preceded by a two-day “Instructor Summit” (only Devon can get away with calling an event a Summit. Really, the man’s a marketing genius, and uses his powers only for good). This was very useful, not least as it was basically two days of instructors chatting about problems they have, and drawing on an enormous pool of knowledge and experience to solve them. There was absolutely no “do it my way”, but lots of “I solve that problem like this”. One of the things I liked best about it was that there were at least three instructors there who have been training longer than I have; a couple since before I was born. And still there was no jockeying for status, political bullshit, or anything other than peers interacting for the common good.

Most of us, in one place. A pub, naturally.
Most of us, in one place. A pub, naturally.

Other highlights of the event for me were:

An afternoon spent with Tom Leoni, with il Fior di Battaglia open on the table, and a couple of swords handy, discussing our variant interpretations of the crossing of the zogho stretto.

An hour spent exchanging mechanics exercises, and killer push-up variations, with Kaja Sadowski and Randy Packer. Randy also gave me one of the best compliments I have ever received; he credited my class on mechanics at 4W in Seattle 2004 with inspiring him to go into body mechanics in depth, which has resulted in his blog BoxWrestleFence, and the foundation of Valkyrie Western Martial Arts Assembly. Valkyrie just that week found a permanent 24/7 training hall.

A private lesson from Roland Cooper on the deadlift; I knew I was doing it sub-optimally (ie. wrong), but have now seen the light. He also gave me an amazing book: Starting Strength. Which I managed to pack.

Meeting the legendary Mark Mikita, of The Mikita School of Martial Art. This chap has been quietly and steadily teaching and training at the highest levels since about 1968. And the walls of his training hall are a work of art to behold. Seriously, it would be worth a trip to LA just to see them in person.

Meeting Marco Quarta, at last; I attended his lecture on the esoteric aspects of European swordsmanship, which combined his scholarly research into Alchemical sources, with his day-job as a research scientist in neurobiology.

Playing a public game of Audatia at the Gala party on Saturday, with Roland Cooper; we were ably assisted by a live Galeazzo, and a live Boucicault, who enacted with swords what we were doing with the cards. Of course, it ended with a kick to the nuts for the unfortunate Boucicault. Viva Italia!

I could go on with a lengthy discourse on meeting up with old friends (Steve, daaaahling!), making new ones, and in general having a wonderful time, but I’d be bound to leave someone out, and I’d hate to hurt anyone’s feelings. This was a lovely, lovely trip, and I’d like to thank everyone in Vancouver, especially the volunteers who made the event run like clockwork. One interesting point there; every single person who I complimented on the organisation replied not with “thank you”, but with “we have a really great team.” Nobody took personal credit for anything. It was amazing.

And a special thank-you to the Masons of Vancouver. They allowed the event to take place in their Masonic Lodge, trusting us to be respectful of their space. This was the first time in decades that they had allowed outsiders in, and I hope they found that we lived up to their expectations. I personally found the regalia and symbology of their ancient traditions inspiring, and clearly related, in part at least, to what we do as historical swordsmen.

The flight home to Italy was surprisingly uneventful; Vancouver to Montreal, Montreal to Munich (a Lufthansa flight. Nice of them to bother. Though it was late and I caught my connection only by the skin of my teeth; I’ve got to hand it to the Germans though: there was a special bus waiting to get us through security and passport control, then straight to the plane), Munich to Pisa, bus from Pisa to Lucca. And back home to my babies. For 18 hours, because the next day we left Lucca en famille, and flew back to Helsinki (Lucca-Pisa-Munich-Helsinki. I wasn’t tired at all). Our Italian adventure is not over though; we will be back!

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Know what you want, and ask for it.

The ability to ask for what you want is a critical life skill. It does not absolve those around you from paying attention to your needs, but it makes it a whole lot easier to have those needs met. This skill has two components: knowing what you want, and asking for it in such a way that you might actually get it.

As always, swordsmanship can show the way. In the basic class on Tuesday this week, asking for what you want was the theme.

It began in the warm-up, with students spotting each other in the execution of a basic exercise (the scoop). The spotters were supposed to tap their partner on the shoulder when they saw an error, but of course, to start with, they were invariably too far away, and relied of verbal communication instead. So the first fix was I had to ask them more precisely for what I wanted. Once the spotting technique was up to scratch, I had them chose either the push-up or squat to work on, using their partner. First they had to identify one possible error (such as dipping the head in a push-up), and ask their partner to watch for it. The lesson: know what you want, exactly, and ask for it, exactly. People generally are pretty good at being co-operative, but very bad at mind-reading.

The rest of the class went the same way; each student would ask for what they wanted (“give me a mandritto, not too fast”; “let’s run the dagger disarm flowdrill, you break the flow, I’ll try to counter it, put me under pressure”), and their partner would give it to them.

And here is the catch; every time you are giving your partner what they ask for, you should be doing it in such a way that you are also working towards your own goals. Every action can be improved in terms of mechanics, consistency, accuracy, and so on. So even if (especially if!) your partner is a beginner (relative to your exalted level of accomplishment), you should be getting useful practice out of giving them what they want.

Whenever I am asked to do a seminar somewhere, I always ask the organisers and the attendees to be really specific about what they want. We then set goals, work towards them, and run diagnostics to make sure we are meeting them. This practically guarantees not only improvement, but also student satisfaction. But only if, and it is a big if, the students present ask for what they actually want. Not what they think they should want, or have been told to aspire to.

A senior student recently came to me with motivation problems. I asked him what he wanted, and we discussed his goals and how we could work towards them (I see my job as helping my students meet their goals, whatever they may be, so long as they don’t go against my overall goal of restoring European martial arts to their rightful place at the heart of European culture). In this process, he admitted in a kind of embarrassed way, that he wasn’t really into the history side of these arts at all. He was much more interested in the practical, physical swordsmanship. Alleluia! Progress! Because he could articulate what he wanted, I could tailor his training in that direction. No embarrassment required.

The relevance to daily life should be obvious. You must first be honest with yourself about what you truly want. Then ask for it, specifically and without reservation. That way, you might just get it.

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On Mastery

Master you are, hmmm? image from www.freepik.com
Master you are, hmmm?
image from www.freepik.com

One interesting aspect of the recent kerfuffle regarding the USFCA certifying “historical fencing masters” is the debate about the meaning of the word “master”. It can mean simply “teacher”, or “one who has completely absorbed a system of information”, or “one who is in control of something else”. For our purposes I think perhaps “expert teacher” is the best compromise. Historically, it was primarily used as a qualification by Universities, and within the guilds. The standard guild process included usually 7 years as an apprentice, then another 7 as a journeyman, then the candidate (or his “masterpiece”) would be examined, and he would be promoted (or not). Being a “master” allowed you to set up shop independently, and take on apprentices of your own. It in no way suggested that you were a prodigy of nature, king of all you surveyed. It was a simple professional qualification. Guilds had and enforced monopolies, so the process, at an economic level, served to raise the barriers to entry, reducing competition and thus increasing profits.

One thing that to my mind has not been sufficiently addressed by anyone is the fact that the swordsmanship masters of old, whose systems we are trying to recreate, were not teachers of “historical” swordsmanship. Their stuff was state-of-the-art. They would certainly fail the academic aspect that any historical fencing masters programme must include, as they were none of them engaged in recreating the art from the sources. (I have no doubt they would ace the practical portion.) There is a fundamental distinction to be made between being able to swordfight, being able to teach swordfighting, and being able to recreate historical swordfighting systems. I for one have never had a sword fight. Nobody has ever tried to kill me with a sharp sword. I do think though that any “master” level teacher in any art should have high-level practical skills relative to his or her students and peers. Especially because when giving an individual lesson the “master” should be able to control the fencing environment to the point that only the desired actions on the part of the student will succeed. (Please refer to my earlier post on giving individual lessons for more details on that.)

Regarding the level required, let’s take my Master of Arts degree in English literature as an example. To complete the degree I was not required to have read every single English book ever written, nor was I expected to be perfectly fluent in every single style of literary criticism. But there were prerequisites to getting onto the course, and certain standards to be met at every annual examination. Within the structure of the degree, there were required courses (Shakespeare, literary theory, and others) and optional courses which included things like “Portrayal of character in 17th-century literature” and “14th century poetry of pilgrimage”. By the end of the degree I was judged, through a process of examination, on whether I was competent to read closely, and argue effectively to support the conclusions of my close reading. So in other words, I had the tools of literary criticism available to me, at a specified level of competence, in this case, “master”.

But compare my “mastery” of literary criticism, for which I have a certificate from a highly respected university (and indeed the oldest department of arts and belles lettres in the world, a fact that was impressed on us when we arrived as freshers), with a Ph.D in the subject. And compare a newly-minted Ph.D with a tenured professor. Suddenly my “mastery” doesn’t seem all that impressive.

The process of historical swordsmanship is vastly more complex than literary criticism, because it includes literary criticism but is not limited to it.* It includes physical execution of complex actions, the ability to teach, and a whole host of other skills that have nothing to do with critical reading. To my mind, someone who has mastered the discipline of “historical swordsmanship”, whether we call them “master”, “Maestro”, “maitre”, “Uber Jedi”, or even just “teacher”, should be able to take any historical swordsmanship source in a language that he or she can read, and come up with a mechanically, tactically, and academically sound and supportable interpretation of that source, develop that interpretation into a syllabus, and produce students who can fight within that system. I think that any program that offers master-level certification should require the candidate to publish a book-length analysis of a specific source, and create and publish a syllabus to develop the necessary skills (these can be combined, of course). The program should also evaluate  the students that the candidate has trained in that syllabus, and include a public examination of the proposed master’s technical skills: teaching a class, teaching individual lessons, and fencing on equal terms with his or her peers. The process must be transparent, public, easily checked. So whatever the standard required by the examining body, it is abundantly clear to anyone interested exactly what level is required, and so what the qualification actually means.

To put it another way: Can they read? Can they do? And can they teach? And then: at what level can they do all three?

Even after all that, in a stand-up fight with a master of old, or even one of his junior students, I think most modern practitioners, myself most definitely included, would be slaughtered. We are unlikely ever to approach the fighting competence of our forebears, as they were immersed in life-or-death swordsmanship in a way that just does not happen in our culture.

When my father was teaching me to drive, he told me that you really learn to drive after passing your driving test. In other words, there is no substitute for experience. I vividly remember my fencing coach at Edinburgh University, Prof Bert Bracewell, encouraging us to get lessons from his colleague, “a young master learning his trade”. This coach was a fully qualified fencing master. But as he had only qualified recently, he was now, in Prof Bracewell’s opinion, setting about “learning his trade”. From the perspective of a beginner, this coach was astonishingly skilled, and vastly experienced. From the perspective of someone who had been teaching professionally for about 30 years by this point (and actively trying to support this master’s career by sending students to him, so absolutely no disrespect implied) he was “learning his trade”.

*For non-specialists: “literary criticism” has nothing necessarily to do with criticising books the way you might criticise the morals of a politician. It simply refers to a non-naive, hence “critical”, reading of literature, digging deeper into the text than a simple superficial reading may. Every serious researcher into historical swordsmanship, whether they think of it this way or not, is engaged in a form of literary criticism.

 

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6 lessons from my favourite mistake

Way back in the dawn of time when I came to Finland to open my school, my research into historical swordsmanship was at a very early stage. But we all have to start somewhere. As I wasn’t sure whether to focus on Vadi or Fiore I included elements of both systems in the material I taught my students. After a couple of years we dropped Vadi to focus on Fiore. It took about nine years to get that system solid enough to build on. So then I returned to Vadi (as most of you will probably know), and instead of a messy hodgepodge of material we have a solid base, and an expansion pack. Mixing the systems is a mistake, but not the one this post is about. To be sure, these days that approach is completely unnecessary and counter-productive, but I don’t think anybody really understood that then.

No, the mistake I made was to take an outlier, an apparent exception to the norm, and simply on the word of a native-speaker, make it part of the core training. Yes, I am referring to the infamous rising fendente blow. A quick look at the segno of blows in Vadi:

VadiBlows

might lead one to believe that the rota blows descend, and the fendente blows rise. But you only have to actually read the book to know that the image is misleading, and a quick cross-reference to Fiore, and indeed to every other Italian sword fighting system in the history of the world, will simply put that mistake right. But no, I took the word of a charismatic self-proclaimed “master”, who happened to be a native speaker of Italian, and cheerily taught my trusting students that in Vadi’s system the fendente is a rising blow.

When my first book, the Swordsman’s Companion, was in the editing phase, I had kept this bizarre misreading, and one of the editors picked it up. (Thanks Greg!) Unlike the “masters” of my acquaintance at the time, this editor did not simply say “No Guy, that’s wrong, it’s like this”: he sent me a page of explanation supported by quotations from the actual source to establish why Vadi’s fendente is a descending blow. The truth, the evidence, was incontrovertible.

So then I was faced with the first proper character test of my new career. Half of me thought that if I admitted such a basic mistake to my students, they would quit. The other half thought that this would be an excellent teaching opportunity, to set the example of changing research leading to changing interpretations, and the truth being infinitely more important than ego or embarrassment. But oh, God, it was scary. That same night in class, I candidly admitted my mistake to my students. I don’t think a single person quit in disgust at my making the error. And I know because they have told me that some were actually reassured or impressed that I could admit it so openly. Some of them are still training with me 11 years later; and some even, with enough beer in them, still rib me about it. (This is fraught with peril, so beware!)

So, the lessons learned:

1) Students worth teaching understand that their teacher is human and will make mistakes. What makes a good teacher is not infallibility, but transparency and integrity. How you deal with mistakes is crucial. That you will make them is a given.

2) If a point of interpretation is an outlier, and appears to contradict the normal usage of the term, check it, check it, check it, before relying on it.

3) It is perilous to mix treatises and systems. Study one system deeply and broadly before attempting to blend two potentially incompatible systems. Create a base of one master’s work before adding to it.

4) Always check the whole book. The usage of a given term will tend to be consistent. If it appears to mean something weird in one place, check that it means the same weird thing everywhere else. This is basically point 2 again, but it’s worth repeating!

5) Being a native speaker does not automatically make you an expert. When I was studying at at Edinburgh University, the professor of English Language was German. His speciality was phonology. Although his own pronunciation was decidedly Germanic, he knew more about how English words are created in the mouth than anybody else I have ever met. But finding out that the professor of English Language was German was something of a shock. Yes, there are nuances of understanding a language that only native speakers can attain, but most do not. And I have certainly met non-native speakers of English who use and understand English better than certain native speakers.

6) “Don’t pull that Maestro shit on me”: be very, very wary of anybody expressing an opinion on the research or practice of this Art (or indeed any art) whose authority rests on a title, or who seems to believe that the fact that it is their opinion should be sufficient to convince you. Expect supporting evidence: true experts will always a) have it and b) be happy to supply it. Listen to those who will provide it, and avoid like the plague those who will not.

And in case it isn’t clear: as the great Quiller-Couch once wrote: “Murder your darlings”. He meant that, when writing, be prepared to cut even your favourite sentences, words or phrases. For us involved in the researching our Art, be ready to sacrifice any opinion, way of doing things, or interpretation, if the evidence demands it.

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How to teach from a shopping list

One of the issues that I face as an itinerant swordsmanship instructor, presiding over a school that exists on three continents, is that I can only visit each branch occasionally. I encourage the branches to ask for what they want, to be actively engaged with their own training. I also encourage all students in regular class to ask for the material they are most interested in, or feel they need to cover next. This means that the group I am teaching on any given day will tend to have a list of material that they would like me to cover, which is often pretty haphazard. For example, last month before going to Turku to teach a class, I received this email:

Here are some wishes for the seminar from the intermediates and class leaders:

1) How to train with someone who is much stronger than you? How to prove that their technique is wrong if they succeed in it only because of their strength?

2) How to get the most out of training with a beginner? How to benefit from this situation?

3) Safe ways of training and ergonomics at work. Maybe focus on shoulders? (Four people in THMS have shoulder injuries at the moment). Maybe something similar to what you were writing in your blog about the seminar in Oulu.

4) 2nd drill stretto (there were some confusion about the way it should be done correctly).

5) Punta falsa.

6) Could we learn some Vadi techniques?

 

PS. There will be beginners attending to this seminar. They know some techniques with dagger, but haven't probably learned all parts of the 1st and 2nd drills yet.

 

As you can see, there is not much obvious connection between teaching the stretto form of second drill, and teaching students to train with others that are much stronger or much less experienced than they are. I spotted a teaching opportunity, and so began the seminar by discussing this list with the students present, and explaining to them the order in which we were going to do everything, and why.

The first step was to identify the most general item. In this case ergonomics, because correct form and structure are required for everything you ever do, in the salle and out. So we spent quite a long time working on perfect push-ups, perfect squats, and the structural foundation of Fiore’s movement dynamics.

Then, using ergonomics as our base, we moved on to the skill of how to use a beginner partner to develop your own skills. This is a very common request, and given that since I came to Finland in 2001 the vast majority of the people I have crossed swords with have been my students, I have an awful lot of experience in making less experienced training partners nonetheless useful. There are basically three ways to do it: you either take advantage of their unpredictability to create genuinely random drills to train your responsiveness; or within the bounds of a set drill, you demonstrate perfect form, because they will copy your every mistake; or in a competitive drill, you aim to win by the narrowest possible margin. We used the standing step drill as a good example of this last idea, and I demonstrated with someone clearly smaller and weaker than myself, who had been training for about a month. By allowing her to push me to the very limit of my balance I was able to use the minimal resistance she was able to give to practice at the edge of my skill.

(I plan to blog about this in specific skill in depth and detail soon…)

This introduced the idea of customising your actions to the specific training partner that you have, and in this case how, without being dramatically more skilful, can you train a beginner out of using their superior strength. There is nothing wrong with strength: strength is good, skill is better, strength applied skilfully is best of all. The trick of course, is to make it so that if they stiffen up, their action fails; but if they execute the action in a relaxed way it succeeds. They will only learn to let go of their strength if they don’t need it. We used the third and fourth plays of the first master of the dagger as our example plays for this exercise. I then had them all look for actions which made themselves tense up, to understand better the problem of relying on strength, and within the context of those actions, focus on using only the minimum necessary force.

So, with ergonomics underpinning all, and focussed experience in working usefully with the beginner, and working usefully with a much stronger partner, we can then address the system-specific technical requests.

We started with the cutting drill, emphasising shoulder stabilisation from the perfect push-ups, and I spotted and corrected some branch-wide errors. We then used a sword handling drill to focus on correct ergonomics for holding the sword. From there we went into first drill, and use that as the basis for working on the punta falsa. At this stage, those that had difficulty with the basic drill were separated out and worked on that. We needed to make sure that the mechanics of the punta falsa were clearly understood, which our economics study had prepared us for. Then the two groups were put back together, with the seniors required to make sure that when they attacked, as the blades met the circumstances were correct for the defender’s set response; and when they defended, they had to respond correctly to the exact conditions of the blade relationship that actually occurred. This made them work on parts 1 and 2 of the training with beginners theory above.

From there we went into second drill, and built the stretto form of it step-by-step from the basic, largo, form. (Note: this drill has been updated since the seminar) Again, those that didn’t know the basic form were taught that, and those that did learned the more difficult stretto version.This was classic, straightforward teaching basic drills from the set syllabus. The trick was to connect them explicitly to the foundational skills we worked on before, namely ergonomics, using beginners, and dealing with stronger partners. Of course the stretto forms of the drills explicitly deal with resistant partners, so fit nicely with the theme.

By finishing up with the stretto form of second drill, we had introduced the zogho stretto situation, and so it was easy to segue into spending the last hour working on Vadi’s solutions to the zogho stretto, and why they differ from Fiore’s.

To summarise, the process of teaching from a list of requests goes:

 

  1. Identify the most generally applicable concept, start with that
  2. Take each request in order of specificity, from most generally applicable, to the most specific
  3. Organise the parts into a logical sequence, paying particular attention to the connections between the items on your list
  4. Make the organisation of the material part of the lesson, so that the students can see how their requests are being dealt with.

 

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Down under again!

The second day of the Sydney seminar began with revision and expansion on the first day’s work, taking some of the dagger plays into a freeplay-type context, then going over much of the sword material again. This established a base, upon which we built an understanding of how the material fits together, and how we can develop the skills needed to apply the art at speed: the bridge between set drills and freeplay. The focus throughout was on how our actions are dependent on those of the opponent. What he is doing determines what will work against him. This lead us in to thinking about avvisamento, foresight, learning to predict the likely blade relationship by manipulating what the opponent sees and can use. (I am working on a post about training methods for developing this skill.)

I try to leave plenty of time for students to ask questions: it is my job to lead them to the next level of their training, which is of course dependent on their current level, experience and interests. The stand-out question was “how do we prevent sniping at the hands in freeplay?” To which my answer is always “don’t expose them when you attack”. Turns out that this gang of Silver fans, like everyone else, was moving in false times. So we spent quite a bit of time working on the basic mechanics of striking without leaving an opening to your hands.

Time and again on this trip it was drummed into me that my best contributions to this Art, and to the students training in it are: the study of mechanics and the coherent organisation of my interpretations into syllabi. These far more than the specifics of those interpretations.

By the end of the weekend I think all the participants came away with a clear picture of the mechanical and tactical structure of Fiore’s system, and an idea of how to develop their skills in an efficient and effective manner. Well done to all!

Monday was spent mostly at the amazing Alexander the Great exhibition at the Australian Museum, then free fencing the Stoccata crew in the evening. This was great fun, and to stimulate their already keen desire to smack me about, I offered a prize of an SES patch for the best hit I received. This was won by Richard Cullinan with a tasty little one-two at single rapier. I didn’t even see it before it landed. Lovely!

This whole trip has been a delight: the students in my classes, their instructors my hosts, the company and the food- even the trips back and forth were not too bad. So, fingers crossed for a return in 2014!

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Still Down Under

I could get used to this. Sat outside in the shade tap-tapping away, (still at a lugubrious 10wpm or so) in glorious 30 degree weather. Not sure I'd get much work done in the long run though. But Sydney is a lovely city. I spent Thursday and Friday being shown the sights, including the most excellent Aquarium, including the totally lethal iddy-biddy blue-ringed octopus and the astonishing dugong, proof that 60kg of lettuce a day will make you fat.
The weekend seminar went very well, I thought (and confirmed by the student feedback, according to Paul). On the Saturday we cantered through a basic overview of Fiore's glorious system, its core mechanics and its tactical base, starting with the idea that your actions are predicated on those of your opponent. We started with the first play of the dagger (Mastering the Art of Arms vol 1: The Medieval Dagger, p 52; as many of the students present now have the book I'll include page references where applicable), and varied the drill by who moves first (p 50). We then looked at being lead into the specific play by the attacker's response to the defence, using the fourth master variations (Chapter 11, pp 87-94). This set up the core idea of the seminar in a concrete, visceral way.
So onto swords, with basic cutting exercises followed by distinguishing between cut and thrust, in the context of the defences of the dagger against the sword (pp 139-147). We then applied the same basic idea using the plays of the sword in one hand, specifically the first, second and eighth. And all that before lunch!
After lunch we covered the key plays of the sword in two hands, specifically the second and third of the second master of the zogho largo, then the second and third of the zogho stretto, using the four crossings drill as a magnifying glass for examining the blade relationship that will lead you into one play or another. You can find videos of all these drills on the wiki, of course.
I continue to be baffled, given that it has been three years now since I figured this out and made it public, why anyone would continue to view Il Fior di Battaglia as a catalogue of techniques organised inconsistently by measure, rather than the detailed development of a single basic idea (hit his sword away) based on what actually happens when you apply it to an opponent with ideas of his own. One of the great pleasures of this trip has been the way that the Australians have been so receptive to new ideas, and gladly abandoned old ways of thought when presented with something better.
I'll carry on with my adventures down under in a couple of days: right now I have to get my spine ready for a 30 hour trip home. It may take longer as I am changing planes in Heathrow, and they had three whole snowflakes at the same time, so all is plunged into Chaos. Hey-ho to the frozen North!

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In the Land of Oz

I have been in Australia for a week now, and enjoying the sunshine (why do I live in such a freezing cold country?), the warmth of which has been eclipsed by the generous hospitality of my hosts. In Melbourne Scott Nimmo and his wife and kids welcomed me into their home with enthusiasm, and here in Sydney I am staying with my old friend Paul Wagner and his wife Julie. It has been wonderful to make new friendships and refresh old ones. But to business:
I am here to teach a series of seminars, the first of which happened last weekend in Melbourne. I had been asked to teach a day of biomechanics followed by a day of syllabus construction. I wish every group would ask for a day of mechanics first! It makes everything else so much easier. The whole weekend was filmed for future reference.

Day One
We started by establishing my expectations (everyone finishes training healthier than they started it; if you have a question, ask; no macho bullshit) and introducing the idea of mechanics: grounding, power generation, efficiency, and going through a basic warm-up focussing on the point and purpose of each exercise. The usual 12 minute series took nearly an hour, and laid the groundwork for the rest of the day: take something you think you know and make it better.
We then walked through beginner's course mechanics: finding where your weight should be on your feet, tongue position, tailbone alignment etc. all tested with gentle pressure to allow for systematic correction.
From there we looked at footwork, and how the system is a means of taking natural actions and ordering them so they can be studied, refined and taught. This included the stick exercise and the four guards drill (or the first few steps thereof).
We then looked at holding the sword- I love that moment when a keen and intelligent scholar of the Art lights up with the realisation of two things simultaneously: I've been holding my sword wrong for years; and now I know how to fix it.
The rest of the day was spent analysing the tactics, source and mechanics of the first two steps of first drill. During that time I also went round and did some very slow and careful exercises with each student sharp on sharp, at the end of which they understood at a visceral level why I say “if you haven't done it with sharps, you haven't done it at all.”
The delight for me came from the avid, gleeful way that this group of students, many of them instructors in their own groups, absorbed and adopted what I had come to teach.

Day Two
This class was all about the syllabus, why it is structured as it is, and how to use it and the tools I have created (the wiki and my books). Only two of the students present had not been there the previous day, and both were quite experienced, so I pressed on without much revision. After the warm-up (which is never just a warm-up) we began with the four guards drill and the first six plays of abrazare, in order and by the book: a lesson if ever there was one in how changing circumstances change your response. His other leg is forward? Then the lines of strength change and so does your exploitation of them.
From there we regrettably skipped the dagger, as no-one had them, and went into part one of the cutting drill, building on the previous day's work. It was necessary to teach from first principles the point and purpose of such solo work.
We then covered the four basic syllabus drills, creating each from first drill using the four-corners multiplier. I then taught the four crossings drill and we used that to create the 3rd play of the 2nd Master of the zogho largo, as another variation on first drill, and thence of course to the stretto form of first drill. We continually returned to part one of the cutting drill to create the memory palace in which to store the material.
With an hour to go I asked them what they wanted, and a few specific questions aside, they wanted more mechanics! That's my kind of group, really: depth beats breadth every time.
A flattering number of the students are making the trip to Sydney- I look forward to seeing them all again tomorrow. The plan is to present an overview of the main mechanics and tactics of Fiore's Art. No doubt I'll let you all know how it went next week.

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Sleepless in Seattle

I have just come back from a very enjoyable and productive trip to Seattle, perhaps my favourite American city. The trip was organised around a weekend seminar for Lonin, and included some consulting work for the CLANG computer game.

I arrived at midday on Thursday, working on a 10 hour time difference. I was met at the airport by Eric and his two adorable little boys, age 2 and 4. Having duly inspected various lego contraptions and pronounced them without parallel, we went to lunch, where I got to not be in charge of the kids. So, all the fun of major kid chaos, and none of the responsibility. Lunch done, Eric dropped me at Neal’s, where my room was filled with cardboard boxes: a case of my new dagger book, a year’s supply of cigars from bestcigarprices.com, and a gigantic bit of Pilates kit for my wife.  I arrived in plenty of time for Neal’s book club meeting. The kitchen gradually filled with startlingly clever chaps, all bringing food and wine. This the kind of book club where, if you haven’t read the book, it really doesn’t matter- the book is just a starting point for conversation, liberally lubricated by the noble grape. My kind of book club, in other words. After a couple of hours of thoroughly civilized conversation and a glass or two, I crashed early, and was duly woken by the time difference at about 5am. This was all to the good as it meant I was up in time for Lonin’s early-bird Friday practice at their salle in SANCA. In this case, only Neal and Eric showed- I’m guessing the other students were saving themselves for the weekend. So Neal and Eric got some one-on-one, then we returned to Neal’s and I spent the morning catching up with emails and updating this blog, then lunch, a nap, and off into town to run some errands; notably finding a birthday present for my wife, posting off the dedicatee’s copy of my dagger book, and posting off the rondel daggers I made for Bob Charrette. I met Neal and his lovely wife Ellen for dinner at Sitka and Spruce, and thence off for a pint at the Pine Box, then reasonably early to bed.

Work began in earnest on Saturday morning. We loaded up the car with swords and were there at the community centre gym by 0930. Class started at 10 (while there were a few folk trickling in- I’ve never seen the slightest need to wait for late people- why should those who arrive on time be inconvenienced by those that don’t?), with a salute and a warm-up, then the four guards drill. The class was made up of mostly Lonin students, with four brave souls down from Canada; twenty in all. It was pretty obvious that though the Lonin students had seen the drill before, nobody knew it. This is normal, as until it is taught from first principles, most people who are using my syllabus but not under my direct instruction don’t understand the role of the solo drills. But 10 seconds of watching them work on it let me know pretty much exactly what we would be covering over the weekend. I spent much of the first morning on the first play of the first master of dagger, starting out in a set, formal, basic version, and building complexity into the drills gradually and systematically. We then moved on to the longsword cutting drill, and the longsword first drill. After lunch (an incredible feast organised by the redoubtable Eric) we went back to work on the cutting drill and the basic pair drills, first setting them up, then applying variations- especially looking at starting from way out of measure and moving smoothly forward without creating an exploitable tempo.

Class was followed by an informal dinner get-together at Eric’s (for which many thanks, especially to his delightful wife Michelle and the two rambunctious little pirates for giving there home over to a horde of smelly swordsmen), and quite early to bed (again!).

Sunday’s class began with the warm-up and a review of the dagger and longsword material from Saturday’s session, punctuated by a minute’s silence at 11am, to mark Veteran’s day (Remembrance Day in the UK). When a debt cannot possibly be repaid, all we can do is acknowledge it. I realised afterwards that two of the students present were veterans themselves, as they both expressed appreciation for the gesture. The rest of the morning was spent working on freeplay-type drills, as diagnostic tools and feedback mechanisms. By the end of it, everyone present could use freeplay to assess a weakness, find drills from the syllabus to address the problem, and return to freeplay to asses whether the fix had taken.

This lead us to lunch, after which it seemed that everyone (except me of course!) was knackered. Ideal circumstances for slipping in some serious mechanics training- finding and strengthening groundpaths, and finding more efficient ways to move. This included such stalwart favourites as the stability drill. What with questions, answers and revision, that took us nearly to the end of the allotted time- but I managed to squeeze in a few examples of reverse engineering any Fiore play from the syllabus- a student would pick a play at random, and I showed how to create it by discrete, syllabus-lead adjustments to first drill.

All in all, the seminar went extremely well, and I think everyone present got the training they were ready for.

That evening a few of the students, and the redoubtable Ellis Amdur (a terrifyingly good martial artist) and his super-glamorous wife Mageli Messac joined us for pre-dinner oysters, geoduck sashimi, and wine at Taylor Shellfish, before an absolutely first-class dinner at Terra Plata. I was pretty shattered by this stage, but had a marvellous evening nonetheless.

Monday morning had a blessedly slow start, before meeting the CLANG crew at 1030  to help them with their user interface for the game. Basically they wanted to spreadsheet the optimum guard relationships, and what could be done from each guard, and in which guard various blows ended up, and other Fiorean details. It was a very useful exercise for me, to have to think about Fiore in spreadsheet terms. We finished up for the day about 1530, giving me enough time to rest up before teaching the evening class at Lonin, where we covered part two of the cutting drill in some detail before sloping off to the pub.

Tuesday started with a two-hour private lesson for Eric, then back with CLANG for a few hours to finish off, not least going over the crossings of the sword. Class that evening was run by Neal (doing Victorian stick exercises and indian clubs, lots of fun) and Nathan Barnett (an old friend I had not seen for about 8 years, who now runs a fabulous little B+B) who ran a basic cutlass class. It was delightful to be just following orders, not having to think about what was coming next. Off to the pub again (of course!) then home at a reasonable hour.

Wednesday was basically free, so I met up with Ellis for a spot of duck in a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant that rivalled the ones I’ve eaten in in Singapore, and some martial arts chat, and then off to see Neal at Delve Kitchen, a simply incredible operation that is at the forefront of modernist cuisine. They were testing blenders- by blending golf balls. Yes, really. I don't think I've ever seen so many astonishingly intelligent young men in one place before, having so much fun wrecking stuff. It was a blast!

A little last-minute shopping, and home to pack. Not a small operation, given those blasted boxes. Some down-time and then my last class for Lonin, where we went over the dagger disarm flowdrill (see p125 of the book) and part two of the cutting drill again, this time as a circular drill. Lots of fun. Then, you guessed it, off to the pub, but a different one this time, more of a beer-gourmet-bar. Heavenly IPA to ensure a restful slumber.

Thursday morning we just had time for a one hour private lesson for Neal, and then off the the airport and home on Friday morning.

In every respect, personal, professional, culinary and cultural, an excellent trip. Thanks are due to all the students who made my classes such a pleasure to teach, to Eric for organising the whole thing, and to Neal for putting up with my turning his home into a post-office.

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Teaching teachers, part 2: the individual lesson

Perhaps the single most useful insight I got from the BAF course alluded to earlier is the idea that in an individual lesson, the coach should create an environment in which the desired behaviour results in the student striking, and undesired behaviour results in the student being struck. This may seem obvious, and it’s one of those things I’ve sort of known for years, but it came into focus for me when one of the coaches on the course got cross with me for praising a student verbally when what he had done was not actually correct. That insight alone was worth the trip.

One of the refrains on Saturday’s class instruction seminar was that you don’t have to be technically superior to your students to run a good class. The refrain on Sunday was that coaching requires the highest levels of technical skill, because you have to be in sufficient control of the situation that you allow yourself to be hit when the student has done what you want, but whenever his action is undesired, it must fail and you must strike. This way the student learns very, very fast, as the environment he is in makes learning and improving absolutely natural.

We started out with a general warm-up, with the 10 minutes split between the three least experienced students- mostly so I could watch them in front of a whole class. Then I split them into pairs and had them run the following exercise: the “student” did one iteration of the cutting drill; the “coach” watched it and made one verbal correction. The student then repeated the drill, applying the correction. When everyone had taken both roles, I asked them if they found the corrections useful, and 12 out of 12 said they did. Which had us bowling nicely along the right track.

The next round was a little more advanced. Basically the same set-up, but this time the coach had to prescribe a specific exercise to be done, either solo or with the coach, to improve the cutting drill, with a second iteration of the cutting drill to see whether the coach’s prescription worked. Again, 12 out of 12.

That introduced the idea of targeting the content of a lesson to a specific need; the students then had to take one of our basic drills and improve their student’s execution of one step of it (e.g. Step 3 of second drill). They had to set it up so if the action was improving, the student succeeded, if not, then they failed. The trick being to adjust the difficulty level such that the student usually succeeded, but only by working at their upper limit.

We then looked at step one of a drill; in its basic form a simple attack from wide measure. The trick was to get it better and better, and faster and faster, by having the student beat the coach’s parry. The parry should be done such that it creates a closing window, that the attack should just sneak through (I borrowed this wholesale from Prof Bruce’s foil coaching- make the student quicker by giving them less time, in a natural setting).

This brought us on to the topic of how to use this kind of skill when just taking part in a normal class. The class had formed themselves into pairs of notable distinct skill level within each pair, and having noticed this I took advantage of it. I set the more experienced person the target of raising their partner’s skill level without actually giving them a formal lesson- just subtly modify what you do so that they naturally improve. (This is high level stuff, and not a basic requirement of the course, just a useful sidetrack.)

We then turned this on its head and looked at abuse of power: in the same pairs, the more experienced student had to use their skill advantage to make the drill a frustrating misery for their partner. Why, you may very well ask? Because more advanced students can fall into this behaviour without malice and by accident. By doing it deliberately, they bring it into consciousness and hence under control. This (very short) section of the class finished by the more advanced students giving their partners a solid technical lesson by way of apology.

We then mixed up the pairs so that the skill levels were about even, and I had each student in turn ask their coach for help with a specific difficulty (“I find the exchange of thrust hard from posta di donna”, for instance).

We then looked at the structure and planning of a 6-7 minute technical lesson. It goes like this:

1) identify or illustrate the problem (get the student to show you it, not describe it)

2) identify the cause of the problem (usually not what the student thinks it is!)

3) prescribe a specific drill or exercise

4) assess the results. If good, go to step 5, if not good go back to step 2.

5) increase the pressure under which the student performs the corrected action.

This lead us on to a discussion of the process of diagnosis, and I sent them all off to practice it. Before breaking for lunch, I asked them to think up questions to be answered in the afternoon session.

After lunch, the questions that made it into my notebook were:

1) How do you apply these skills in a basic class?

2) how do you do a finger-safe version of the punta falsa? (this from a student with a bleeding thumb)

3) how do you use your voice when coaching?

4) how do you use pair drills to improve guard positions?

5) what do you do with a resistant or frustrated student?

6) how can you react in time to a student’s error to give the necessary physical feedback?

7) how do you run a beginner’s course?

8) how do you help a student who is much stronger than you are?

This allowed me to couch the afternoon’s material in the terms most useful to the students present. We started with a finger-safe version of the punta falsa, as a base technical drill in which to practice other coaching skills too. The punta falsa is of course perfectly finger-safe as it is; but done incorrectly, it can lead to putting your left hand in the way of the player’s riposte. So I showed them how to teach that particular correction (emphasise parrying between your hands and then striking with the point, smoothing out the two steps until they are one again), and covered how to use your voice when coaching: use single words, to draw the student’s attention to specific details. E.g. “Parry.” Or “foot”. Avoid where possible “good”, “bad” type judgement statements, reserve that for praise at the end of the lesson. (Praise is useful, necessary even, but must always be sincere. Even if the student totally screwed up the lesson, find something to praise. And always, focus on their efforts not their accomplishments.)

Then we looked at helping a strong student to be precise, instead of relying on his natural advantage. This is technically challenging, as what you have to do is make their strength insufficient; not too hard sword against sword, but much more so when grappling. In essence, you need to give the student a reason to use correct technique, because insufficient accuracy leads to being hit.

(At this point in the class my phone rang (I had forgotten to turn it to silent), because my younger daughter had gone missing in a supermarket, and my wife, having called the police, called me. The fact that, statistically, it was vanishingly unlikely that anything really bad had happened did not actually help the rising panic, but I got that under control in a breath, halted the class, explained the situation in under 10 seconds, handed the class off to the senior student present, enlisted a driver (my wife had the car), and was out the door in under a minute. While we were backing out of the parking lot my phone went again to say the little monkey had been found, and so I went back to work after getting my heart rate back below 100 and doing a much-needed 20 push-ups, which are due if your phone rings in class.)

I then moved the class on to look at the problem of fixing guard positions in a pair drill. It’s pretty easy to work on them when you (the coach) are standing by with a helpful finger or useful suggestion, but sword in hand it can be a bit more challenging. We started with correcting a position at the beginning of a pair drill. Simply do not allow the drill to start until the position is better. Within a phrase, you have to find the reason why the position must improve- usually because if it stays as it is it cannot withstand the forces acting on it. So increase those forces such that the position fails until the student corrects it (making sure of course that they know why they are getting hit). To help with this we looked at setting up drills where the student’s line of strength in their position determined their success. Fairly basic for anyone with a grounding in grounding. So I set the more advanced students the challenge of setting up a drill such that the student had to get their lines of weakness right before their actions could work. This took more doing- apparently they had forgotten yielding actions (such as the colpo di villano).

Reaction times are a tougher nut to crack. Basically, if you can’t see the student’s error in time, you can’t give the lesson. So, either slow the lesson down, to give you more time, or learn to read the error earlier in the student’s action.

We then looked at giving a tactical lesson- improving the student’s choice of action, rather than the action itself. Adding a degree of freedom is of course the usual tool; in circumstance a, do this, in b, do that. The coach then sets up the circumstances such that they control when a or b occur.

This brought us on to Beginners, bless them. The rule of beginners is this:

Show it to them correctly a thousand times, and they will eventually get it. Show it to them wrong once, and they’ll copy it correctly first time.

Every action must be taught from the familiar: walking across the salle becomes passing steps; swinging the sword from shoulder to shoulder becomes striking; etc. We didn’t spend much time on this as it was a little off-topic. For further insights into running a beginners’ course, see my blog post series.

Then we studied how to use these coaching skills in a basic class (where you are not the teacher). In any pair arrangement either:

1) your skill > your partner’s; subtly tweak what you do to bring out their best.

2) your skill < your partner’s; ask for a (non verbal!) lesson on the drill in question. Or simply study how they do it.

3) your skill = your partner’s; play with the drill.

In all cases being careful not to disrupt the lesson.

We then came back to the beginning: the students paired up and watched each other do the cutting drill, making whatever correction seemed most necessary to them. This highlighted the spiral nature of training; you are always coming back to the beginning, just (if your training worked) at a higher level. Advanced technique is just basic technique done really well.

Then to finish off, they paired up again and gave each other 5 minute technical lessons.

All in all, an excellent day.

I'm currently working on a book about how to teach historical martial arts, but in the meantime, you can find more here:

How to get started teaching historical martial arts

How to teach left-handers

Teaching Teachers, part one: Class Instruction

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Guy Windsor: a website all about the Renaissance Italian martial arts expert who blends historical accuracy with practical training.